This is really cool. There are many great Japanese baseball videos on YouTube, but they can be challenging to search for.

The man that Hideki Matsui is talking to in the on-deck circle is the player-manager of the Yakult Swallows, who would have been the man who caught Shingo Takatsu in Japan.

Brian26

06-21-2012, 07:45 PM

Nice job by that last batter in running out the grounder.

FielderJones

06-22-2012, 12:35 AM

Why do Japanese uniforms have names in Western European charset?

SephClone89

06-22-2012, 08:45 AM

Why do Japanese uniforms have names in Western European charset?

Because they think it looks cool/like baseball should be.

DonnieDarko

06-22-2012, 10:48 AM

Because they think it looks cool/like baseball should be.

Pretty much this.

In Japanese, if you want to draw attention to a word or make it "cool", you have two options: writing it out in Katakana, or English. Most of the time you'll see Katakana, but especially with American products you're more likely to see it in English.

Foulke You

06-22-2012, 03:02 PM

Pretty much this.

In Japanese, if you want to draw attention to a word or make it "cool", you have two options: writing it out in Katakana, or English. Most of the time you'll see Katakana, but especially with American products you're more likely to see it in English.
What is Katakana?

FielderJones

06-22-2012, 03:07 PM

What is Katakana?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

DonnieDarko

06-22-2012, 03:11 PM

What is Katakana?

Oh boy. Let me drudge up my Japanese lessons from years ago...

Japanese has 3 (yes, 3) systems of writing, essentially.

2 types of kana (the more simplistic-looking ones), and then Kanji (the more complex, Chinese-looking ones. They're basically traditional Chinese). Kana are used to express phonetic words, while Kanji are used to express ideas AND words.

The 2 Kana are divided in to Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana is used to write out "Japanese" words, as in words that originated in Japan. They're also used for particles (a part of Japanese grammar), and for some simple words, too. These characters are generally simple to write and are very curvy and flow well.

Katakana is the sytem of writing used for "foreign" or "cool" words. My favorite example of this is the Japanese word for "bread": Pan. Yes, the same way that it's said in Portuguese (yes, I know I spelled that wrong) and Spanish--because the Japanese never had seen bread before the Europeans brought it to their shores. There's also words like "konpyuta", "shupamaketo"...and many more. You might also see some kids trying to be cool by spelling their names in Katakana, too. Katakana characters are usually very rigid and straight. VERY easy to tell apart from Hiragana with a bit of practice.

And Kanji are used to tell more complex words that are more than just words. Argh, it's hard to explain, but Kanji are used more to express ideas rather than outright words (though they technically do both--it's confusing). For instance, the Kanji for "woman", if I remember correctly, is pictographically expressed as the gulf between men and women, symbolizing that they will never be the same and will never truly understand one another 100%. Kanji are easy to spot, because they're mostly so damned complex.

Sorry if I ended up confusing you and went on a long tangent. It's been awhile since I've studied the language...

EDIT: Here are the Kana tables. You'll notice that every different consonant follows (mostly) the same pattern of vowels: a (ah), i (ee), u (uoh), e (eh), o (oh).